Eritreans Attack Family: 'I Thought Eyal was Dead'

Five Eritreans pulled a man out of his car and beat him senseless "just for fun," in front of his family.

By Gil Ronen

First Publish: 7/31/2013, 10:46 AM

Eyal Gavriel

Nitzan Gavriel

Five Eritrean men pulled a man out of his car in Tel Aviv Friday and beat him senseless in front of his family. According to the man's wife, the attack was completely unprovoked and was carried out "for fun." The attackers were not drunk, she added, and did not steal anything.

Eyal Gavriel, 35, who works in the Bat Yam Municipality, drove to Tel Aviv's central bus station Friday morning to buy alcoholic beverages. In the car with him were his wife, Nitzan, and their three children – a five year old son, and two daughters, aged 2 and 10 months.

When the car was on Matalon street, Nitzan told Arutz Sheva, Eritreans began throwing rocks at the car, for no apparent reason. They followed the car. "When we reached Levinsky Street, my husband, who was driving, stopped at a red light. Suddenly the driver's side door was opened by an Eritrean who grabbed my husband and pulled him forcefully out of the car. And that is where the nightmare of our life began."

"A group of Eritreans grabbed my husband and beat him all over his body, kicking him, punching him, and stabbing him with a knife they pulled out," she recounted. "They dragged him on the road and he lost consciousness. I saw his head bobbing from side to side and thought he was dead. I stood there screaming, 'Enough! Stop!', and my son watched it all and screamed, 'Mommy, they're killing my daddy!'

"I couldn't help my husband. I was afraid to leave my children and the thought that they might come back for me and our three little ones devastated me even more."

Nitzan called the police, who showed up quickly and behaved admirably, she said. However, Eyal was beaten for close to four minutes before police rescued him and succeeded in catching two of the five attackers.

"I can still see before my eyes, like a movie, how my family could have turned into the next case of murder by inhuman Eritreans, capable of endless barbarism!", she wrote in her Facebook page, appealing to fellow Israelis to make sure to drive with their doors locked in the areas inhabited by the illegal immigrants.

Eyal and the 5-year-old son are both traumatized, she told Arutz Sheva. The boy is afraid to leave the house or talk to anyone except members of his family. Eyal is recovering at home, and suffers from a broken nose, cuts and bruises, besides the psychological trauma.

Illegal African immigrants flooded into Israel for years before a fence was erected at great cost along the Sinai border. Inside Israel, left-wing groups have been fighting fiercely to prevent their repatriation and encouraging them to organize and treat their host country with contempt.

Nitzan said that no news outlet apart from Arutz Sheva and one other paper had contacted her in order to report the story.